How to End Democratic Infighting and Win Elections Using Wedge Issues

Democrats don’t pay much attention to me because I am a former Republican and they are skeptical of any advice I offer as fruit from a poison tree. Nevertheless, I want the Democrats to win because Trump and my former party are an existential threat to freedom and the rule of law. Since there is no meaningful dissent within the Republican Party on the issue of fealty/devotion/loyalty to Trump, leading to abject cowardice on the part of all its leaders, efforts to stop the slide into authoritarianism and fascism must come from outside—either from Democrats or ex-Republicans such as myself. (Independents are incapable of leading anything; that’s why they’re independents. But they can be the margin of victory in elections.)

When I was a Republican, most of that time I worked in the minority in Congress. Unlike Democrats today who whine and complain that they can do nothing without the majority, Republicans were very active in the minority—with far fewer seats than Democrats have in either the House or Senate today. A key strategy was an emphasis on “wedge” issues. These were issues on which the Democrats themselves were divided or on which the electorate favored the Republican position. Hence, it was often possible to win victories for Republican policies even under Democratic control, or at least force the majority to cast uncomfortable votes that might aid a Republican challenger, or perhaps even help the challenger to a Democratic incumbent in a primary, thus weakening them in the general election.

We pursued the wedge strategy relentlessly in the 1970s when I worked for Congressman Ron Paul (Texas), Congressman Jack Kemp (New York), and Senator Roger Jepsen (Iowa). The Democrats’ great weakness at that time was inflation. Thus any policy we opposed was automatically labeled “inflationary” whether it was or it wasn’t. Democrats were hobbled by their belief in the “Phillips Curve,” which posited that any measure that would lower inflation would necessarily raise unemployment (and vise versa). So they were caught on the horns of a political dilemma from which there was really no escape without going “outside the box.”

Among the more pernicious effects of inflation was that it pushed people up into higher tax brackets when they got a cost-of-living pay adjustment. Although their real income had not risen, the tax code assumed that it had. Thus they were taxed on illusory income. This meant that the tax issue was highly salient, politically. The problem for Democrats was that the budget deficit was widely viewed as the principal cause of inflation. Since they were loathe to cut spending, for political and humanitarian reasons, this meant that the main burden of deficit reduction fell on the tax side. Although Democrats didn’t advocate higher taxes, they didn’t have to because inflation raised taxes automatically. For every one percent of inflation, federal income taxes increased about 1.5 percent.

Thus tax cuts became the principal Republican wedge issue. We talked about them constantly and used every legislative opportunity to press for them. The recently-enacted Budget Act of 1974 provided many such opportunities. We achieved few legislative victories until June 1978 when Proposition 13 was enacted in California to cap property taxes. (Inflation also raised the assessed values of homes, thus causing property taxes to rise automatically.) Reluctantly, Democrats supported a modest tax cut that year, which only fueled Republican demands for more and bigger tax cuts.

Ronald Reagan jumped on the bandwagon and supported the tax cut I drafted for Jack Kemp and Senator William Roth of Delaware. It proved to be very popular in the 1980 campaign and helped Reagan win.

Although tax cuts are the wedge issue I know best, there were any number of other such issues that Republicans exploited to split the Democratic coalition, such as gun control, abortion, national security, energy, affirmative action and many others. It didn’t really matter how Democrats in Congress voted on these issues, because Republicans benefitted either way. Either Democrats alienated their own constituency or they alienated swing voters. Some Democrats tried to straddle the fence, becoming what were called “blue dog” Democrats who supported Republicans on a few key issues. But this only opened them up to primary opposition from the left and most of these blue dogs either retired or became Republicans.

Despite the enormous success Republicans had exploiting wedge issues, Democrats have not followed suit. This is curious to me because there are any number of such issues that split the Republican coalition. Yet Democrats seem fearful of raising them.

The most obvious example is trade. Trump’s tariffs are economically counterproductive and every Republican knows it. All during the 1980s, Democrats were the party that favored protectionism and Ronald Reagan regularly berated them on this subject. I recently compiled a list of Reagan speeches defending free trade, one of which was recently used against Trump in an ad paid for by the province of Ontario, Canada, after Trump imposed purely punitive tariffs on Canada (which he raised by 10 percent in a petulant response to the ad.) Why it never occurred to Democrats to do this themselves is a mystery. Perhaps they hate Reagan so much they can’t bring themselves to use his words even when they would help. They should remember the old adage: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

There are any number of other issues on which Republicans are vulnerable that Democrats seem to fear raising. For example, many prominent Democrats opposed New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s proposed increase in taxes on the ultra-wealthy in New York City. Although some opposed the substance of his proposals, I think most were fearful that any suggestion of higher taxes, even those that would only impact the ultra-wealthy, was politically toxic.

Yet polls have shown for years that the American people support higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy because they are very concerned about rising inequality and the maldistribution of wealth. Just yesterday, a YouGov poll confirmed this fact.

Wealth Inequality

84 percent of Americans, including 96 percent of Democrats, 87 percent of independents, and even 68 percent of Republicans say that the rich have too much political power in the U.S. 57 percent say that the government should pursue policies to reduce this gap.

Taxes on the Rich

64 percent say that billionaires in the U.S. are taxed too little. 72 percent think taxes on billionaires should be increased.

Minimum Wage

Another great wedge issue is the minimum wage. Yet not only did Democrats do nothing to raise it when they had the opportunity under Joe Biden, they seem loathe to even talk about it despite overwhelming support across the political spectrum. In yesterday’s poll, 69 percent of people supported raising the minimum wage to $15 (from $7.25, where it has been since 2009, although some states and localities have higher rates). A plurality of both Republicans and conservatives support the proposal, 49 percent to 35 percent for the former, and 43 percent to 37 percent of the latter.

I will have more to say about wedge issues Democrats should be pursuing in other posts.